Historically Dead Page 7

  I looked out my window to see a couple of officers pacing around the exterior of the house, examining the ground around the windows and checking the walls and windowsills. I shivered at the thought of a murderer creeping in the library window to bludgeon poor Professor Burbridge to death.

  Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore. I threw down my curtains, having only succeeded in adding two inches of embroidery to the hemline, and strode out of the room and down the stairs. I paused in the great hall, listening. A clatter came from the kitchen, so Carl Harper must have finished with the police and gotten back to work. I turned toward the living room to find the door closed and Louise Pritchard standing outside, ear pressed to the keyhole. I chuckled at the picture she presented, far less subtle than I had been. But she could probably hear much better than I had. I walked over and tapped her on the shoulder.

  Louise reared back as if I’d hit her over the head with the murder weapon. She let out a yell you could have heard all the way in Philly. Carl Harper popped out of the kitchen brandishing a massive wrench at the same instant that Officer Franklin hustled out of the living room.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “It was a mouse,” I cried, willing Louise to keep her mouth shut. “It ran right along the baseboard. It scared us both.” I took Louise’s hand and pulled her away from the door. “Come sit down in my sewing room to get over your fright.” I propelled her to the stairs, catching a glimpse out of the corner of my eye of Carl Harper trying to hide the oversized wrench behind his back, while Officer Franklin’s bright black eyes took everything in.

  I dragged Louise up the stairs and led her to my sewing room. I pushed her into the only chair, and perched myself on the corner of the sewing table. “So?”

  She rubbed her mouth sullenly. “What’d you have to go poking me like that for? Scared the bejesus out of me.” She shuffled her feet and rubbed her hands on her blue twill pants. “You didn’t really see a mouse, did you?”

  “No, of course not. I didn’t think you’d holler like that, or I would have called your name or something.”

  “Well, don’t go judging me for listening at keyholes.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m not judging you. I want to know what was going on inside. What did they say?”

  She stared at me, and then started to laugh, an ugly sound with a hint of hysteria just below the surface. I waited as patiently as I could until she settled down.

  “That lady cop, she’s asking Miss Priscilla all kinds of questions. See, there was an argument with the professor, the night before you found his body. The two old ladies were going at it with him, I don’t know why. Somehow the cops found out, and now they think the old ladies bumped him off.”

  I bit my lip, remembering the shouting I’d heard coming from the living room right before Professor Burbridge stormed out, muttering something about not wanting to be silenced. If he had something to say that the two old ladies wanted kept quiet, then they’d gotten their way in the end, hadn’t they? Could they have threatened him? Could they have actually killed him?

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said out loud. “Neither Ruth nor Priscilla could have hit Professor Burbridge over the head hard enough to kill him.”

  “Miss Ruth could have done it in a heartbeat,” Louise retorted. “That cane of hers could drop an ox. You know she murdered her husband. What makes you think she’d never do it again?”

  I stared at her. “She murdered her husband? I heard she was acquitted at trial.”

  “Maybe that’s what you heard, but I’m telling you, she was guilty. She had a fight with him, she stormed out of the house, and then the house burned to the ground in the wee hours of the night with him in it. Who else wanted that man dead? People loved him. He was always donating to worthy causes. She was probably just mad that he was giving away all her money.” She leaned in to whisper in my face, “I’ll bet that professor found out something about the old man’s murder, so Ruth had to shut his mouth for good.” She sat back with satisfaction, no doubt enjoying the dumbfounded look on my face. “I hope the cops get to the bottom of this before anyone else gets clonked over the head!”

  I shook off the mental picture of Ruth creeping up behind Professor Burbridge and whacking him over the head with her gold-tipped cane. “Did you hear anything else just now?”

  Louise stood up and dusted off her pants. “The cops said there was no evidence of forced entry into the house. The murderer didn’t need to break in. The professor was killed by someone who was already in the house.”

  Chapter Six

  I mulled over Louise’s bombshell long after she left to return to her duties. Someone inside the house had killed the professor. Unless the murderer had snuck in, an unlikely prospect given the fact that the doors were usually kept locked as a safety precaution, then it was a member of the household, or someone involved with the remodeling for the TV show. Chances were, it was someone present in the room when Ruth stood up and demanded, “Who?”—unless it was Ruth herself, with her shady past and cantankerous nature. The only one I could be sure of, besides myself, of course, was Priscilla. There was no way that Priscilla could be a murderer!

  My hands trembled as I passed the needle back and forth through my curtain fabric, mindlessly embroidering a winding vine along the hemline. I couldn’t let sweet Priscilla suffer under any hint of suspicion of murder. At her age, she’d earned the right to be left in peace, regardless of her unorthodox ways. My resolve hardened with each prick of the needle. I had to look into the professor’s death myself, to make sure that Priscilla didn’t become the focus of the Laurel Springs Police Department’s murder investigation.

  Why would someone want to murder Professor Burbridge? He was bossy and sometimes disagreeable, but that didn’t seem like a motive for murder. Maybe it was time for me to get together with Noah Webster.

  I made myself finish the embroidery along one of the six curtain panels before knocking off for lunch. If I was going to meet this tight deadline, I had to be sure to put in the time on my sewing, even if my mind was distracted. The embroidered vine had a few unexpected trailing tendrils, but the TV cameras were unlikely to pick up on them, so I called it good. I packed up my sewing bag and hurried down the stairs.

  I popped my head into the living room to see Priscilla dozing in her wingback chair, and Ruth sitting bolt upright reading the newspaper. “I’m taking off for lunch,” I said softly, so as not to disturb Priscilla. My heart ached at the thought of that sweet old lady undergoing a rigorous police questioning and feeling herself to be suspected of murder.

  Ruth didn’t even look up. She turned the page of the newspaper deliberately and continued reading. I didn’t know if she was ignoring me or if she hadn’t heard me, but I really didn’t care. I headed out the front door and down the long driveway to the street.

  Compton Hall presided over a street lined with maple trees, which had replaced the stately elms that had stretched a canopy over the road before they all died of Dutch elm disease in the 1960s. The picturesque road led past the Tremington estate to the outskirts of Oliphant University.

  The imposing brick buildings of Oliphant University encircled a quad crisscrossed with cobbled paths. The academic quad was dominated by Old Main, the only original building still standing following the devastating fire of 1892. Ironically it was the simplest of the academic buildings, built of fieldstones with wide shutters framing the symmetrical windows on the four-story edifice. Numerous renovations had all spared the marble staircase in the front entry, which bore the imprint of generations of students’ feet in the smooth indentations on each stair step.

  The plaque next to the stairs listed the history department on the third floor. I hastened up the stairs, conscious of my fast disappearing lunch hour.

  The third floor looked like it had last been renovated in the 1940s. Wooden doors overlooked by transom windows lined the plain white ha
ll. Small brass plaques screwed into the wall identified classrooms and professors’ offices. I looked for Noah Webster’s name, on the off chance that he had an office to himself, but didn’t see it. Professor Burbridge’s office was easy to spot by the crime tape stretched across the door. I stood in front of it at a loss, wishing I’d gotten Noah’s phone number before Randall had scared him off. I didn’t consciously mean to do it, but all of a sudden my hand went out and jiggled the doorknob of Professor Burbridge’s office. Surprisingly, it opened.

  I checked the deserted hallway, and then ducked under the yellow police tape and slipped into the professor’s office. I didn’t know what I was looking for, since the police had obviously already been here, but the opportunity was too good to pass up.

  As Noah had mentioned, the professor had been extremely untidy. Piles of paper covered the desk and spilled down into numerous mounds on the floor. An old green chalkboard covered one wall above an old plaid couch that had probably accompanied the professor from his own years in grad school several decades ago. The professor’s spindly handwriting filled the chalkboard with some kind of outline under headings like “Early career,” “Influences,” “Maneuvers,” and “Mr. X.” I pulled out my phone and took a series of pictures of the chalkboard, certain that the police had done the same.

  I longed to sift through the papers or rummage through the desk drawers, but I didn’t want to leave my fingerprints all over the office of a dead man whose body I had been the first to find. I settled for easing open a few drawers with the folds of my skirt, hoping that I didn’t leave any fibers behind. I didn’t see anything interesting, beyond an extensive pile of replacement typewriter ribbons that presumably matched the shrouded machine perched on a rolling metal table in the far corner. A desktop computer sat on the wooden desk, indicating that the professor kept the typewriter for its historical value rather than as an everyday tool. I thought of my antique treadle sewing machine, which I did use on a semiregular basis, and felt a sudden affinity toward this pretentious academic who obviously loved a bygone way of life.

  An uproar in the hallway outside the office startled me out of my reflections. I crept to the window in the door and peered out to see a flood of young men and women clutching thick textbooks to their chests as they chattered their way down the hall. I checked the clock above the chalkboard: 1:00. Class must have just gotten out. I waited until the hallway was quiet again, and slipped out of the office, softly closing the door behind me. Once I was on the correct side of the crime scene tape again, I paused to plan my next move.

  “If you’re looking for Burbridge, he’s dead.”

  I turned to see a young woman dressed in overalls and an oversized bright purple T-shirt, balancing a heavy backpack on one shoulder. She couldn’t have been older than nineteen. Her long brown hair was caught back in an untidy ponytail that swished whenever she moved her head. She regarded me steadily, waiting for me to make the next move.

  “I know. Shocking, isn’t it. You never expect your teacher to die on you.”

  She eyed me doubtfully. “He was your teacher? Are you a grad student, then?”

  I smiled and held out my hand to her. “No, I was working with him on the historical renovations on Compton Hall. I’m Daria Dembrowski, a seamstress.”

  She shifted her backpack and shook my hand limply, as if unaccustomed to this social convention. “I’m Liselle. He was my American history prof for summer term. I didn’t really know him that well—he would lecture once a week or so, but the grad students led all the discussion sections.” She gazed at the crime tape blocking the door. “He was brilliant.”

  I paused a moment, touched by her matter-of-fact statement. “I heard he was researching Major Samuel Compton.”

  “I don’t know about his research.” She glanced at her watch. “I gotta get some lunch before my biology lab. Are you headed to Foraker?”

  I knew enough about Oliphant University to know that Foraker was the student union, which presumably housed the cafeteria. “Yeah, I’ll walk along with you.” I abandoned all hope of returning to Compton Hall in time to satisfy Ruth, and fell in step with Liselle. “Do you know the history grad students?”

  She shifted her loaded backpack long enough to brush a wisp of hair out of her face. “Sure. There’s a history table at lunch on Mondays. We’re already late, but I could introduce you, if you want.”

  “That would be awesome. Will Noah Webster be there?”

  “Were you looking for him? He’s leading a discussion section until two thirty, I think.” She led me down a winding cobbled path that led to the edge of the academic quad, where it turned into a nondescript concrete sidewalk snaking off down a sloping lawn to the student union building. Built in the 1960s, all asymmetrical slate and glass, Foraker contrasted with the stately academic buildings encircling the quad. It hummed with activity as the summer term students foraged for lunch.

  Liselle waited while I purchased a meal ticket, and then helped me navigate the various food stations. I bypassed the made-to-order items in favor of the premade cafeteria entrees that could be slapped on my plate without delay. I followed her to a large round table filled with about a dozen students. We plopped down our trays and pulled up a couple of chairs as other diners squeezed over to make room for us.

  “This is Darla, she’s a seamstress,” Liselle announced, cutting into a spirited discussion on the New Deal. She took a big bite of her ham and cheese sandwich.

  “It’s Daria,” I said, flashing a big smile. “I was working with Professor Burbridge on the historical renovations at Compton Hall. Such a sad thing, him dying suddenly like that.”

  A clamor arose at my artless statement. One voice rose above the rest, that of a clean-cut young man wearing a blue Oliphant University T-shirt and cheap sunglasses perched on his close-cropped head.

  “You know he was murdered? Somebody shot him in the back at close range.”

  I merely nodded, uninterested in correcting his misinformation. I worked on my macaroni and eggplant casserole while the talk of murder swirled around the table. Then I threw out my next gambit. “I wish I’d known the professor better. I hear he’s a brilliant researcher.”

  The serious-looking young woman sitting beside me heaved a sigh. “He might have been, no one knows. He was very secretive about his research. I think Lexicon’s the only one who knows what he was working on.”

  “Lexicon?”

  Liselle giggled. “You know, your friend Noah Webster. Like the dictionary. We call him Lexicon. He hates it.”

  Poor Noah. Obviously he was the one I needed to talk to. “I wonder why Professor Burbridge was so secretive about his research.”

  “Maybe he thought somebody would kill him over it.” The clean-cut guy with the sunglasses took a big slurp of soda, relishing the thought of a murderer stalking the historian on account of research.

  “Maybe he didn’t want anyone to know how far behind he was, while at the same time giving his students points off for late work,” another voice piped up.

  “Oh, come on!” The painfully thin woman across the table from me twisted the gaudy rings covering her bony fingers. “Burbridge wanted to be the first to publish his research, just like any other historian. If he was behind in his research, it was because of all the other things he was involved in, in addition to teaching.”

  My ears perked up. “What other things was he involved in?”

  She rolled her eyes. “He was your consummate conspiracy theorist. He had all these crusades he was working on—like historical investigative reporting or something. He was looking into a cheating scandal at the law school four years ago that got covered up by the administration. Then there was that story of corruption in the contractors’ union that happened eight years ago. Burbridge wanted to find out if the city assembly was behind the corruption that it supposedly exposed.”

  “Hmm. I thought Prof
essor Burbridge focused on Revolutionary War history. It’s funny that he was spending a lot of energy on these kinds of modern-day causes.”

  She shrugged. “He wasn’t a purist. He always said you could consider anything to be history as long as it didn’t show up in the newspaper’s New Year’s recap of the biggest events of the past year.”

  Another voice piped up, this time coming from a petite young woman with oversized black glasses that made her look more owlish than sophisticated. “I think he really enjoyed the thought of getting other people in trouble. I’m guessing there were lots of people who wanted him dead.”

  I gazed around the table at the serious faces of the students. “What about his students? What did you guys think about him?”

  “What, you think we wanted him dead?” the clean-cut guy demanded.

  His very defensiveness made me wonder. “No, of course not. I was just wondering if he was a well-loved professor, that’s all.”

  “You either loved him or you hated him.” The thin woman picked at her overly long nails. “He was notorious for giving tough grades. If he gave you a D, he’d look you in the face and say you earned it. But if you got an A, you’d know you earned that too.” She looked at the watch dangling from her skinny wrist. “Time for class! Nice to meet you, Darla.”

  “It’s Daria,” I muttered, watching the students scrambling to gather up their trays, books, and backpacks. I followed them out of the student union, checking the time myself. My lunch hour was long ago over, and living room curtains weren’t going to embroider themselves. I resolved to connect with Noah another day, and hustled down the street and back to Compton Hall.

  I spent the afternoon stitching leaves and butterflies on an endless vine border along the hemline of the curtains. The fancy work was a delightful change from simple hemming, but at the same time it demanded a certain amount of concentration. More than once I let my mind wander and had to rip out a butterfly flying backward or a vine tendril pointing in the wrong direction. But I couldn’t still my mind to focus solely on embroidery.